This Late Hour
by Quinndolynn
Summary: They're like that painting in the night The team grabs a late dinner after the events of Endgame.


Title: This Late Hour

Summary: A late night team dinner after the events of Endgame

Warnings: This was supposed to go up ages ago, but I never liked it and school happened, and now here it is, for better or worse! There's tinges of ship, but like optical illusions, if you cross your eyes they go away. Technically a sequel to Dinner Gone Cold, but not really.

Disclaimer: Je ne l'ai pas.

They depart for the elevator, bachelors all and none of them the better for it, and the rest of the so-called evening unfolds in front of them.

Gibbs is going home. He doesn't coddle his agents, and his quota of beautiful red-haired ghosts is more than filled without him needing to exorcise McGee's too. Plus, seeing Jackie get all stubborn today has caused an old ache to return to him. There's a space where _his_ partner who refuses to leave his side is supposed to go, and he needs to go home and plug that hole with a mortar of bourbon and sawdust.

Anyway, he trusts Tony and Ziva, though flawed in dealing with their own hauntings, to be able to handle Tim's. He glances over to find them already deep in discussion about the relative merits of grease-laden pizza and triple-chili salsa. McGee doesn't join the conversation, but when Tony announces "Chinese!" like it's a winning Jeopardy answer, he nods as the doors ding open.

Gibbs claps each McGee on the shoulder, nods at his other field agents, and delivers them unto the mercy and healing graces of late night fast food.

"I'll drive," Tony volunteers in the same strident voice and, claiming to know just the place they need, packs his teammates into his car. McGee is a little bewildered, with a vague feeling of being kidnapped with his own permission, but he _is_ hungry, and before he really makes up his mind on the matter they're pulling into the handkerchief parking lot of some dive that a friend of DiNozzo's swears by.

A bell on the door chimes as Tony ushers them inside, but it echoes a bit too long. The place is glaringly bright and glaringly empty. There's only one booth occupied, and it's obviously being saved for them, so that doesn't count.

"Finally," Abby says, marking her place in her book and pushing a plate of fried noodles in their weary direction. McGee falls into the booth next to her and Tony lets Ziva slide in on the other side as Abby hands round the laminated menus. Ziva snaps hers open with the relish of closed-case hunger, while Tony crams noodles in his mouth, and offers her unwanted advice on her meal selection. A fried strand of dough dangles from his lip like the cigarette of a fedora-wearing gangster, but she studiously ignores both his suggestions and affectations.

McGee examines his menu in silence, watching the zodiac characters bob and weave in the margins as his eyes become unfocused with exhaustion.

"Hey," Abby says softly, bumping his shoulder with her own. He looks over. "You want that," she says pointing. She smiles at his querulous look. "I had a while to look at the menu."

McGee nods and sinks back in his seat, stretching his neck a little and watching as Abby begins building card houses out of sugar packets. Her scientist fingers craft a minor miracle of splenda and sweetner as Tony and Ziva move on to arguing about MSG. Abby enthusiastically chimes in with chemical names and derivative substances so McGee collects the dish of creamers and starts stacking a low protective wall around her pastel paper castle, as her hands gesture dangerously, sketching diagrams in the air.

The door chimes open a pair of night-shift security guards, come to have lunch, while their co-workers watch the desk.

"See, regulars!" Tony whispers, looking vindicated over his pick of establishments, and Abby and Ziva exchange disbelieving looks. There's space in the glance for McGee to join in and look skeptical too, but he's staring off into the distance and misses it.

"People often frequent terrible establishments," Ziva scoffs. She wants to make a cutting remark about Tony's taste, but it's late and the putdown gets sidetracked into a somewhat dreamy recollection of a café she used to frequent, and fabulous pastries they had there. Abby sighs in hungry appreciation, but Tony makes a crack about picking up guys, and they're off again, round and round in the familiar circles of mocking and laughing, as the door opens on more and more famished night owls. McGee could easily hop on this runaway train of a conversation, but somehow he doesn't feel like talking, especially not into all the gaps his friends are leaving between their words. It almost becomes entertainment in itself, watching as comment after comment, thrown out to draw him into the conversation, ricochets around his teammates' mouths and falls defeated to the scuffed tabletop.

Eventually they give up on trying to include him beyond the range of a grunted response, and he loses interest in listening, choosing instead to catalogue the occupants of the booths around them.

Tony's friend might be onto something after all because now the place is half-empty in a way that equals busy for this time of night. There's a gaggle of kids who probably snuck out to see a show, and are now reluctant to let the night end, as it inevitably will, in the revoking of car keys. There are a few couples, infatuated, drunk, or both. Plus the late night regulars, a sketchy character or two, and a forlorn grad student working through a lonely paper one facebook quiz at a time.

Amanda had said her paper went fine, she was giddy with finished work bliss as she kissed him, and he had believed her, thoughtlessly, just like he had believed a pretty woman would want the number of the dumpy guy in her coffee shop.

Well and so. He tunes back in to the conversation, and now it's about Agent Dunham of all people, and Texan longhorns. Truthfully, he can't quite follow this line of banter as it whips back and forth around the table, and there is a line of sharpness running through it that makes him hesitant to grab hold.

McGee feels Abby drum her heels on the seat beneath them in frustration, but mercifully, the waiter comes, bearing hot metal pitchers of tea and more noodles, to take their order. Abby sweeps the sugar packets out of the way with one hand, and sketches the start of a harmless story about the nuns with her other. By the time she's finished the table's calm again and the food is arriving in fragrant waves of fried glory.

The dish set down in front of him smells heavenly, and he knows Abby chose well when ordering for him, but as he stares at the gleaming plate he can't bring himself to pick up his fork. There's an ache in his throat where his voice is stuck and an ache in his stomach where this morning Amanda-not-Amanda's gun pressed against his gut.

"Eat up, McGooGaiPan," Tony orders, rapping his fork on the table to snap McGee out of his daze. "You need to keep your strength up."

The sarcastic and obvious _for what_, hovers right on the edge of McGee's tongue, but Tony puts on the stern parental look that he thinks makes him seem like Gibbs and McGee is suddenly too overwhelmed with exhaustion to argue, enough so that he obediently puts a forkful of chicken in his mouth. Abby rubs his back in three quick circles, and steals a shred of beef off of Tony's plate with her flickering chopsticks.

"Hey," Tony says, trying too late, to parry the assault with his fork.

The chicken fat, or the soy sauce, or the MSG works its mundane wonder on McGee's tongue and his brain, and his stomach unclenches a few degrees. Abby's hand still resting between his shoulder blades, her high clear laugh at Tony's response, helps too.

He is still distantly floored by Abby's reaction to Amanda-when-she-was-Amanda. He can't help but wonder what it means.

He takes three more bites of chicken, and they each help a little, but it's all just improvement by degrees.

McGee is ill suited to this role, of being the probie caught in a whirlwind seduction of the sort that Tony or Ziva usually execute, dealing with the sort of dark past that only someone with Gibbs or Ducky's lengthy history should conjure. He is used to others causing drama, to being a peripheral, unwitting witness to the cataclysms of the rest of them. Now the rest of them are supporting cast in his story.

His supporting cast has fallen quiet though. The pause in conversation brought on by the arrival of food has lengthened into an actual awkward silence. Everyone is shoveling in mouthfuls of food and staring along a trajectory that avoids anyone's eyes. The chatter, like some temperamental engine, has paused and refused to start again, as if realizing it was running on fumes the whole time.

They're like something out of a Hopper painting McGee thinks to himself, night pressing black and grim on the glass, and them inside with their woes on display, and their silence lit fluorescent.

Tony is least able to handle the quiet, McGee can tell from the way his fingers tap as he watches their stone-faced waiter wipe down the counter. "You know, I think I like this place," Tony decides, breaking the spell. "It's got a feel of something…"

"Hopper," McGee supplies. He's conditioned to supply answers when he knows them after all. They stare a little, surprised to at last hear his voice.

Tony snaps his fingers. "That's the one."

"Nighthawks," Ziva adds in clarification. They turn to stare at her a little, impressed with the specimen of _trivia americana_ from their own foreign assassin. "I went to the Hopper exhibit-" she says, and clips her sentence short to shovel more fried rice onto her plate. There's a space after her words where _with Michael_ fits, and Tony's face goes dark as he plugs that hole with descriptions of his own making. The conversational engine sputters and dies for good in front of them, clunking loud in McGee's ears like the throb of blood to remind him they are going nowhere fast. He realizes he should have kept his mouth shut after all. For all that they are his supporting cast tonight, the subject of rogue operatives raises ghosts for all of them.

Nighthawks indeed, McGee thinks, studying his teammates behind his water glass; a smart-suited man shoulder to shoulder with a beautiful women, the world gone dark outside, and them still refusing to speak to each other.

That makes him the lonely guy at the other end of the counter of course, back to the window because no one wants to see his face or know what brings him to a hard stool. He's just there to bring balance to the picture, an unwitting witness to others' slow cataclysms.

And Abby's the waiter in a shining white apron, keeping an eye out for the cracks that won't be healed with good greasy food alone, ordering for him when he can't find the words. He drags his fork through the soy sauce pooling on his plate, and thinks forlornly that his meal selection is the only part of this that's worked out well.

Abby always knows what he's thinking, and on cue, her hand stretches into two whole arms encircling him, squeezing him with all the love that's in her soft black t-shirt and studded cuffs. She leans her head on his shoulder and says in a broken voice, "Oh Tim."

It breaks a little part of him, but somehow that feels right.

They're a good team, these people, so they realize, psychically, telepathically, and maybe because Abby shoots a pointed look across the table, that not talking about any of this is just not going to work. Tony and Ziva may be flawed in dealing with their own hauntings, but they took this assignment upon themselves, so—

Ziva reaches across the table and pulls McGee's plate out of reach, ignoring the inarticulate noise of protest. Tony dictates the terms of ransom: "a real heart to heart" and no messing around about it. Abby pats his arm in wordless support.

So they talk about it, at first unwillingly, but then with greater ease. They talk about a girl-woman named Kai who saved Tim's life today, and the red-haired Juliet who would have taken it. They talk about the patent unfairness of having your life saved by one of the bad guys, and having your life endangered by someone who you actually liked. They talk about close calls, and destiny, and how Tony will get fat if he keeps eating Danish. They discuss the state and nature of Gibbs' shipwrecked soul, and the entertain speculation about how long his bourbon will keep it afloat. They admire Jackie's grit, and table the director for another time, because he continues to fulfill and defy expectations. They bang on the engine with all the wrenches in their arsenal until it starts back up.

By the end they're talking about how MSG is a plot from the North Koreans to render the country round and helpless, at the mercy of magical midnight places like this, with the silent waiter and a third scalding pot of tea to go with their orange slices and fortune cookies.

They're a good team, these bachelors, even though Ziva tips salt into Tony's tea when he's not looking, even though Tony flips McGee for the tip and uses a trick quarter, even though on their way out Ziva taps the grad student on the shoulder on their way out to tell him that the terrapin is not a fearsome mascot at all, and Tony has to drag her away because McGee and Abby are too busy laughing over the expression on the kid's face.

They're a good team because they pull the hurt from their teammate's chest and replace it with love, pull the ache from his belly and fill it with fried rice instead, and flawed bachelors or not, they can banter their way to a pretty successful late-night, grease-fueled exorcism, when called upon.

((This was supposed to be a Tim story but other dynamics snuck in (obviously) like waaay too many conversation metaphors, and a little Tiva angst and even some Gabby (which I'm not even sure I ship, so wtf self?) Anyway, I'm going to be up the rest of the night writing a paper, so thanks for reading and I hope you'll review!))


End file.
